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Oysters

Oysters boiled in wine, water, pepper, and mace, then thickened with butter and flour, served with bread and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Plump the oysters in their own liquor, then drain and wash them clean in water.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine the drained oyster liquor, water, white wine, whole pepper, and mace. Bring to a boil.

  2. Add the oysters and let them boil briefly.

  3. Thicken the mixture with butter and flour.

Serve

  1. Serve with slices of bread and garnish with sliced lemon.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Are the main ingredient, providing the dish's flavor and tender texture when briefly boiled.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce when combined with butter.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid, balancing the richness of the oysters.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters and boiling briefly. Oysters toughen and turn rubbery when overcooked. Letting them boil only briefly until their edges curl keeps them tender and juicy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, white wine, pepper, butter, flour, lemon, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, white wine, pepper, butter, flour, lemon, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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